


Immortal Baggage

by isxbella



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s02e03 School Reunion, Fix-It, M/M, Telepathy, they kiss and shout at each other and stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25462102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isxbella/pseuds/isxbella
Summary: The Doctor’s an expert at running from his problems, so it’s only fitting that it takes an immortal one to catch him up.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Comments: 3
Kudos: 55





	Immortal Baggage

The Doctor was shocked to see Mr. Finch lead Sarah-Jane Smith into the staff room, but even more shocked to see her accompanied by a man whose very presence grated on his time sense. 

He hadn’t actually seen Jack Harkness before he’d run away with Rose, but now he did he found his former lover radiating. Time and space was a relentless storm with Jack at its centre, the universe's one steady constant. The power Jack held had terrified him, but now as he watched the ease at which the man existed haloed in timelines, he marvelled at it. 

Jack was even more beautiful and alive as an immortal as he had been human, and the Doctor wanted nothing more than to stake his claim by grabbing the man and showing him how he felt. It would be intoxicating to love and never have to lose, he knew- even more addictive than Jack’s fifty-first century pheromones which filled the air as the man strode forwards at Sarah-Jane’s side. 

And the grin. Jack flashed it at the Doctor as he shamelessly checked the time-lord out, and he found himself responding with an equally inconspicuous look up and down the immortal. He barely registered Mr. Finch’s hasty introductions until Sarah-Jane was thrusting her hand into his and complimenting his name. 

Then it was Jack’s turn, and the Doctor was ashamed to say that Jack’s ability to use his own name as the universe's most effective pick-up line hadn’t changed. 

The Doctor grinned and replied, “Pleased to meet you, Captain Harkness.”

This close, Jack looked better than ever- except that his brilliant blue eyes didn’t show the youth of his body but rather the age of his soul, much like the Doctor’s own. This Jack was no longer his Jack, he had to remind himself, as his eyes lingered on the departing immortal. 

—

The first sign of trouble had been the attempted hack of Torchwood’s files surrounding the UFO activity at Deffry Vale High School. The second sign had been when Jack had traced the hacking back to a London residence owned by Mickey Smith. 

The timelines were complicated, like everything involving Jack, but it had been safe to assume that Mickey would only be interested in alien activity after he’d met the Doctor. The very notion of tracking down the leather-jacketed time-lord made Jack hasty to agree to further surveillance in the area. Bugging Mickey’s flat had been a dead end, the signal was weak and his only visitors were the Tylers and Rose’s new eccentric boyfriend- who was attractive but not what Jack was looking for. The next logical step had been going undercover in the school itself- where apparently Rose was employed- to sniff out any remaining clues. Jack trusted only one person with matters concerning the Doctor, so he ended up pretending that he and Sarah-Jane were reporters when they finally went undercover. 

Jack had avoided Rose and tried his best not to overly flirt with her physics-teaching boyfriend all day while under Mr. Finch’s eagle eye, but unless the night’s break-in provided new information, he’d have to abandon the case and head back to Cardiff. 

“What’s that noise?” Sarah-Jane whispered as the pair walked around the empty corridors with their flashlights. 

Jack’s heart almost skipped a beat. Maybe he was hallucinating, or they both were, but it was worth a shot.

“I’ll go in first,” he decided, putting the flashlight between his teeth as he fiddled with a paperclip in the lock. Lock-picking technology has evolved dramatically since the twenty-first century, but so had the locks and there was no need for such expensive equipment to bust a twenty-first century lock. 

The door unlocked with a click and he leapt through it with a distinct lack of subtly. His light fell on the TARDIS and he heard Sarah-Jane gasp behind him. 

“Hello, old girl,” Jack whispered, stepping tentatively closer to the box and placing a palm on her door. She warmed faintly at his touch and he took a deep breath.

“Jack,” a voice said slowly behind him and he turned- leaving his hand on the TARDIS. He shouldn’t have been surprised that Rose’s maybe-boyfriend (he couldn’t make that assumption anymore, it just seemed wrong) was- in fact- the Doctor. 

Jack wanted to kiss him and kill him all at once, but what came out was a somewhat possessive growl. 

“You look good,” the Doctor commented casually, his hands buried deep in his pockets and a smile teasing at his lips.

Jack stared daggers at him. “Immortality will do that for you.”

The admission seemed to change something in the Doctor- but he didn’t look as unsettled as Jack would’ve thought. 

The time-lord swallowed. “Sarah-Jane, if you go to the cafeteria you should find my companion Rose. Take her my sonic, will you?”

Sarah-Jane took the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver from his extended hand. His eyes never left Jack’s. 

She left wordlessly and as soon as she was gone something snapped in the Doctor and he stalked towards Jack, pinning him against the TARDIS door behind him and kissing him. 

It was demanding but succeeded in expressing the Doctor’s tangled thread of thoughts better than words could. When Jack broke it to breathe, he exhaled a single word, “Alright.”

The men stared at each other. The Doctor’s cheeks were flushed pink and his pupils had expanded. 

“I hate you,” Jack whispered. “And I love you.”

The Doctor barely reacted to his words. “I know. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Jack was stunned by the sincerity of the Doctor's words, and even more stunned when he found himself kissing the man again, his hands tangled in the time-lord's mussed hair. 

Sometime later, someone coughed and the Doctor pulled away, turning around with a bright grin. 

“Jack?” Rose spluttered as the human’s face was revealed. She paled and reached for Mickey’s hand beside her. Mickey was equally as shocked, but on Rose’s other side Sarah-Jane smirked knowingly.

“Rose, Mickey! You both know Jack,” the Doctor trilled. Rose stopped gaping after a few seconds to close the distance between her and Jack to consequently slap him.

“You have some explaining to do, mister,” she demanded. The Doctor chuckled, but she turned her glare on him. “You too, Doctor! You said that he was dead!”

“Not permanently,” the Doctor wheedled, not meeting her intimidating gaze. 

The blonde turned her eyes back to Jack. “Well?”

Jack licked his lips, his cheek still stinging from her slap. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Rose Tyler. I haven’t seen you in a hundred years.”

Her features softened at his tone and she spoke quietly. “What happened?”

“What did he tell you had happened?” Jack countered in an equally delicate tone. Next to him, the Doctor stiffened. 

Rose looked between the pair. “Not much. That the situation had changed since he’d regenerated and that you weren’t to be travelling with us anymore. He said you were okay- and that it wasn’t my fault but… it was a taboo subject. A while later he admitted you had died- but not when or where.”

Jack could picture it. Rose, a newly regenerated Doctor and a million questions he wouldn’t answer wedged between them. The Doctor had done what he did best- run. 

“Did you know that I died for the first time on Satellite Five?” Jack asked, tone as nonchalant as possible. 

Rose’s eyes widened but before she could talk the Doctor reached out and touched her arm. “Rose remembers that she absorbed the vortex, but not what she did.”

Jack let out a sigh of realisation. “Oh. It was her.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “Rose made you immortal.”

The statement caused many reactions: Rose’s mouth dropped, Mickey started shouting and Sarah-Jane began asking questions. Jack silenced everyone with his hand.

“I woke up in time to hear you leave. Stranded on Satellite Five among dead bodies and dalek dust. It took me four days before I realised you weren’t coming back and I didn’t have enough food left. I managed to get my vortex manipulator working for one jump.”

“That thing was in terrible condition before,” the Doctor exclaimed. “It can’t have been much use.”

“It missed 2005 by about a century,” Jack confirmed. “I thought I was done for, but then I got shot and I woke up like it had been a bad dream. Except it wasn’t. I kept dying over and over, but never for real.”

Sarah-Jane gasped. “That’s why your Torchwood records didn’t match up. You’ve been in service a long time, Captain.”

There was an outcry from the others at this.

“Torchwood!” Rose said. “As in Queen Victoria’s Torchwood?”

Mickey was grumpy. “That was you blocking out those files? Should’ve known.”

But it was the Doctor’s reaction that Jack watched. The man clenched his fists. “I thought you were better than those killers.”

It passed unsaid between- two words signifying a tragedy yet to happen.  _ Canary Wharf.  _

“Yeah, well,” Jack replied, “you thought wrong.”

—

The attitude in the café was frosty. The Doctor and Sarah-Jane chatted over K9’s repairs while Jack caught up with Rose and Mickey at another table. Every few seconds, one man would send the other a look that couldn’t be defined by a single emotion. 

It was driving Rose mad. She had spent enough time on the TARDIS with them both before they had begun dating, and the atmosphere was distinctly recognisable. 

Jack was a lot more hurt than he cared to admit too, but only because she had known him before did she realise that his flirtatious manner was half-hearted. Next to her, Mickey was in shock at the immortal’s takes of war and famine- but distinctly less sex than his stories from before. Rose could slap herself once she’d figured out why, because she knew herself how impossible it was to forget about somebody like the Doctor- and she had never been his lover. 

The evening air was cold as the conversation by the time they- or more specifically the Doctor and Mickey- were loading up Sarah-Jane’s car in preparation of the next day’s adventures. The Doctor went stiff when she challenged him about leaving Sarah-Jane, and when he promised her he wouldn’t leave her Jack scoffed.

That was the breaking point for the men. Rose felt foolish for bringing it up, but at the same time knew somebody had to get them to resolve their issues because she’d die before giving up on her best friends. 

“I left you because you were fixed, okay? Great, big fact shining fact like an eternal sun! All that power, all that time- just because the TARDIS wanted me to have someone I could never lose,” the Doctor shouted, waving his arms like a mad man. 

Jack retaliated with equal anger. “Didn’t I get a say in how dangerous I was before you ran from me? Forever is still forever, no matter if you want to pretend I’m not out there. I deserved closure!”

Face almost pressed against Jack’s, the Doctor snarled. “It’s not like I could forget you exist if I wanted to, every time you die the universe has to knit itself back together. If Gallifrey was still around, you wouldn’t be allowed to live, Jack! You’re impossible!”

“Well, why should I believe what you say anyway? You lied back then, and you don’t seem to have changed all that much, Doctor.”

Rose watched the Doctor process Jack’s last comment, not moving from his position. Mickey shifted awkwardly and Sarah-Jane pretended not to be interested in their lover’s spat. 

Jack barely breathed. “Need a refresher, Doc? You promised you would always love me for who I was, not despite it. And this is me- an immortal who works for Torchwood. And then they’re you- the time-lord who ran, again, because he was scared.”

The Doctor turned away. “Rose, we’re going back to Mickey’s for the night.”

“Oi!” Mickey protested as the alien pushed past him with his superior strength. 

He looked back to Rose for confirmation, but she shook her head. “No, Doctor, I’m not going anywhere with you right now.”

—

Jack made up the excuse of needing photographs for his article to sneak back into the school. He told himself it was essential for his cover, but it was no real secret that he wasn’t ready to let go of the Doctor just yet. 

The time-lord seemed determined to ignore him after last night’s fight, and Jack had no clue how to resolve the baggage between them- he only knew that he desperately wanted to. 

When he next saw the Doctor, shaking with anger and yelling about an obscure formula with the same tone he’d used for him last night- an understanding passed between them. Earth first, personal complications seconds- the unsaid code of the immortals. 

And even later, when the Doctor- riled up with unreleased anger and words and inexplicable emotion- dropped his brave face as Sarah-Jane walked away from him, Jack dared still not to question the time-lord. Jack swallowed his pride (and his entire Doctor-focused way of life the last hundred years) in replace of a cocky salute and suggestive grin as he- too- strode into the distance aimlessly. 

At least, the distance of thirteen metres into the cover of the trees in anticipation of hearing the TARDIS’ wheeze one last time. Eyes shut, he waited to no avail. 

“C’mon, we’re not done,” a voice said softly, causing Jack to turn and instinctively grab the speaker by the cuff, pinning  _ him _ against the tree. 

The Doctor squirmed uncomfortably in Jack’s grip, and the immortal released him immediately- stepping a whole foot back. 

“Sorry, Doc- I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Jack…”

Jack shook his head vigorously. “No, Doc, it’s okay. Maybe in a few years there’ll be something we can do or say to make this work.”

“Oh, Jack,” the Doctor sighed, brown eyes softening. “Thing is- That’s not what I want at all.”

“What do you want?” Jack bit his tongue and subconsciously looked the Doctor up and down. He wondered if the Doctor even knew his type, let alone that this regeneration fit it. 

The time-lord smiled and stepped into the gap between them. “May I?” 

Jack blinked, and the Doctor took it as an agreement- pressing his fingers to the side of Jack’s head. Then, he broke down his mental walls. 

Jack had received minor psychic training under the Time Agency, but was completely unprepared for the flood of the Doctor’s emotions and thoughts. 

Almost automatically, Jack’s own mental walls fell and their (mostly pornographic) contents merged with the Doctor’s. He tried to catch a few before they came into the Doctor’s reach- unsuccessfully.

_ You have my hand. In a jar. _

_ Shut up, you regret leaving me.  _

As soon as he thought the words, the realisation as to what they meant hit him. 

_ You asked me what I wanted. Now you know.  _

The Doctor withdrew his fingertips from Jack’s head, and Jack hissed at the sudden severance of the connection. 

“Come with me, Jack. Just for a while, we can figure out Torchwood and everything later. You and me, like old times.”

Jack grinned. “Do I even have to answer?” 

  
  



End file.
